Apples and Picnics

We had Monday off this week for Labor Day but it felt like a full week of school--we accomplished a lot.  I have tons of pictures to post.  :)

On Sunday, we took a "field trip" to an apple orchard because that was the theme of Nathan's preschool this week:

A big thrill was crossing this creek!

We all were in blue/orange because you were supposed to wear your favorite team's colors (Bears!).  It was hot, hot, hot and we cooled off with some apple cider slushies while getting a ride from Bessie, the tractor.  Nathan LOVED riding this tractor--his smile could not have been bigger!!

For school, we painted with apples.

We made apple pie play dough.

Painted an apple tree (foot = trunk, hands = leaves and fingerprints = apples):

And we made patterns with our painted apple cut outs.  This is his pattern and he's very proud:  

Sometimes we watch Blue's Clues on the Kindle after school:

Samuel had an okay week.  We are still figuring out our groove with him...

But, this week he worked on sorting piles--read some fun books about sorting this week.

Doing some lines for art:

 Making a Seasons book:

Hunter and Lily had a full week!  We made a map of the Bible lands--this was really fun and I think we all enjoyed it.  MFW curriculum teaches this in a neat way.

For science, we tried burning paper using a magnifying glass and the sun to recreate Archimedes' death ray.  The kids enjoyed this and we had a good amount of heat but no burning.

We also crushed wintergreen lifesavers in the dark for science--we did see the spark!

Here they are printing their names using the cuneiform alphabet on sugar cookie "tablets".

Celebrating Rosh Hashanah:

On Saturday, we headed to a park for a picnic for independent homeschoolers.  It was HOT but we had a lot of fun.  Brian and Nathan spent some time in the sand:

These 2 started a water fight among the children:

Lily is in front (in the brown shirt) running in the water fight--it was hard to get a picture of her because she is a social butterfly!!  There was a handful of families--some cancelled, probably due to heat--but no shortage of kids.  The kids had a blast and were wet, sandy and tired when we left.